McCain cites questionable story on 'evil'

By Ben Smith

08/17/08 12:40 PM EDT

A reader points out that John McCain's example of pure evil yesterday rests on a story asserted by Iraqi officials, but since cast into doubt.

"Not long ago in Baghdad, Al Qaeda took two young women who were mentally disabled and put suicide vests on them, sent them into a marketplace, and by remote control, detonated those suicide vests," McCain told Rick Warren. "If that isn't evil, you have to tell me what is."

The horrifying story that terrorists used two women with Down Syndrome to carry bombs was a sensation in February, but The New York Times later suggested it hadn't happened that way:

Psychiatric case files of two female suicide bombers who killed nearly 100 people in Baghdad this month show that they suffered from depression and schizophrenia but do not contain information indicating they had Down Syndrome, American officials said Wednesday.

In the aftermath of the Feb. 1 bombings — the most devastating attacks in Baghdad since summer — Iraqi officials said that the women had Down syndrome, a genetic disorder. They based their opinion partly on the appearance of the remains of the women, whose heads, as often happens in suicide bombings, were severed by the blasts.

A senior American commander in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Jeffery W. Hammond, also said there were indications that the women were mentally disabled and were unwitting victims of insurgents.

The information led to reports that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni extremist group that American officials say is led by foreigners, had been using mentally disabled people as suicide bombers.

But a senior American military spokesman said Wednesday that it remained unclear whether the women had Down syndrome or suffered from any medical condition that would have prevented them from understanding what they were doing.

Not that the suicide bombings weren't evil enough. But the Down Syndrome bombers — as they were described at the time — seems to be an urban legend.